Thursday, October 29, 2009

Where's My Avocado?

Did you ever have one of those days when a particular ingredient inspires a dish? Did you ever have one when you whip up most of the dish only to discover that you don't HAVE that ingredient? SIGH!

I was taking a break and happened to flip to Chef at Home. Chef Michael Smith (who always inspires me) was in the middle of making a tuna avocado salad and my mouth started watering at the notion of avocado.

But how was I going to incorporate pasta ...after all it is Thursday and tomorrow is another Presto Pasta Night Roundup. This week's host is Haalo,of my favorite Cook (Almost) Anything and I'm really looking forward to her second time at hosting. So that means .... you still have some time to send her your pasta treat. Just email your entries to hellohaalo (at) gmail (dot) comand cc me at ruth (at) 4everykitchen (dot) com.

But I digress...back to my sad story. Being inspired, I cooked up some cute farfalle, opened a can of tuna, chopped a few sun dried tomatoes, about 10 oil cured black olives, a handful of cilantro leaves and two spring onions. So far so good...a drizzle of good olive oil, a splash of rice vinegar and a grinding of pepper. Finally (I always leave the avocado chopping to the very end of the preparation so it won't discolor....and that's when I realized that my avocado was dead. I don't mean just a little over ripe...I mean...beyond help.

That said....although I will have to go hunting for more avocados...my tuna, pasta dish was delightful.

How do you compensate when you find out too late that a key ingredient is missing...run out to the store?...find another ingredient?...change the dish entirely?...or put it in the fridge until you can get whatever is lacking?

By the way...I'm desperately looking for Presto Pasta Night hosts for the last two weeks of November and the beginning of December. Who wants to play? Just drop me a line - ruth (at) 4everykitchen (dot) com and I'm happy to pass over the baton.

4 comments:

Valerie Harrison (bellini) said...

This sounds so refreshing Ruth.

Joanne said...

This sounds delicious, even without the avocado (although I do believe the avocado would make it absolutely out of this world good).

tigerfish said...

I'm only starting to "like' avocado recently!

Cook some soup, Ruth. Warm yourself up :)

Goody said...

Avocado would be hard to substitute, I think. Not too many foods that have that depth and creaminess.

Rice vinegar never would have occurred to me in a dish like this. That's a good thing to keep stashed away in the back of my brain for future use.

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